In part 3 of our Advanced Cidewalk Techniques series, we’re going to walk you through creating a coupon for your business to increase the foot traffic coming to your store or restaurant.Previously, we discussed making a big impact on your promotions themselves – from A/B testing to increase the number of clicks or engagements you get, to turning to social media to further your promotions’ reach.Part 3 of our series is more geared for those with brick-and-mortar presences; however, it can be used for ecommerce-only stores as well.Historically, offering coupons to your customers has been proven to have a positive effect on sales. And, according to the 2014 Coupon Trends Report by intelligent commerce network operator Inmar, “more than 2 billion times in 2013, shoppers found and selected the manufacturer deals they wanted through digital technologies.” How’s that for a reason to include a coupon in your promotion!Including a digital coupon in your promotion is more simple than it may seem. All you need to do is:

Choose a town to run your promotion in

Include a coupon code in the text of your promotion

Specify how people can redeem the coupon in the promotion description space

For example, let’s say Pete’s Pizza wanted to distribute a coupon for 10% off all large pizzas. To do this using Cidewalk, Pete would create a promotion that said:10% off all large pizzas at Pete’s!Must mention coupon code “Cidewalk” when placing your order to redeemAnd that’s it!Now, to redeem the coupon, mobile users in the town Pete targeted can walk into Pete’s and mention the coupon code “Cidewalk.” Or, they can place an order over the phone. In both cases, Pete can analyze the success of his Cidewalk promotion simply by keeping track of the number of people who say “Cidewalk” when ordering their large pizzas.To take it even further, Pete can target different towns with different coupon codes to determine which towns are most responsive to his promotions. In the future, Pete can target these towns more often to increase his revenue on slow business days.Running a promotion for an ecommerce store is very similar. Instead of specifying that the customer must mention the coupon code in person, let them know where to enter the coupon code online to redeem. An ecommerce promotion might read like:10% off everything at WackyDresses.comEnter coupon code “Cidewalk” at checkout to redeemSimple as that!Be sure to check out the previous Advanced Cidewalk Techniques posts:Part 1: Proper A/B Testing to Measure and Run Better PromotionsPart 2: Leveraging the Power of Social Media + Cidewalk for Your Business